Hawking: The universe created itself from nothing because of all the gravity and stuff that was there before

Move over, Nietzsche. World’s-greatest-physicist Stephen Hawking’s latest book The Grand Design, has “settle[d] the God question once and for all.” At least that’s how one blogger headlined it.

Full disclosure: I hate science and it hates me. Really. In that long-ago, uninspired, and nearly-forgotten stage of my life called “school,” I took science. I think. At least I remember doing unpleasant and smelly things because sadistic adults made me.

On the other hand, Hawking just retired from the same position at Cambridge University held by Isaac Newton. It’s really amazing that we even belong to the same species.

That’s why I feel ridiculous writing this, but then that’s never stopped me before. So here goes: Am I the only one that finds his statement a little, well, ridiculous? Contradictory? Dare I say, illogical?

“Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing,” the excerpt says. “Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to … set the Universe going.”

Huh? I gotta be missing something here. Is he saying that the existence of gravity created the conditions that made the universe the first thing to exist? Hmmmm. That makes me want to knit my Neanderthalish beetle-brow and scratch my head.

But then what do I know compared to this intellectual descendant of Newton; who, incidentally, said, “This most beautiful system (The Universe) could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.”